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The third annual Global Monitoring Report on the Millennium
Development Goals was presented at the World Bank-IMF Spring
meetings at the end of April.
It highlights economic growth, better quality aid, and trade
reforms, as well as governance.
"Less than 10 years remain until 2015, the target year
for the MDGs. We are making progress in many countries, and
this shows that development efforts can deliver results. But
with just a decade to achieve the goals, it’s urgent
for both developing countries and the donor community to improve
governance to ensure we get the results we seek. This report
proposes a framework that defines governance, and proposes
tools for monitoring it."
— Paul Wolfowitz, President, The World Bank
The elements of global monitoring examined in detail in the
report include: poverty and malnutrition; human development
outcomes; meeting commitments on aid, trade, and debt relief;
performance of international financial institutions; governance
in developing countries; and global checks and balances to
strengthen governance.
At this joint ODI and World Bank meeting, the three lead
authors of the report discussed their findings with ODI researchers
working on aid and governance.
1. Simon Maxwell, Director of the Overseas Development Institute
(ODI) opened the meeting, introducing the Global Monitoring
Report and the speakers from the World Bank (Mark Sundberg,
Punam Chuham, Brian Levy) and from ODI (Paolo de Renzio, Julius
Court).
2. Mark Sundberg explained that the Global Monitoring Report
(GMR) is published by the International Monetary Fund and
the World Bank. Its purpose is to monitor the implementation
of commitments made by developing countries, developed countries,
and the international financial institutions in the Monterrey
Consensus of 2002. The six main messages of the 2006 GMR are
that:
- Favourable growth - with good growth in developing countries
- has helped reduce poverty, but more even and accelerated
progress requires strengthening of infrastructure and national
investment climates.
- Recent progress in human development outcomes points to
the need for more flexible aid, better coordination, and improved
governance.
- Major aid and debt relief commitments were made in 2005,
but better aid and vigilant monitoring are needed to guard
against risks to their effective implementation. Trade reform
needs new life.
- The focus of the international financial institutions (IFIs)
must shift from managing inputs to achieving real results
on the ground. This poses major challenges to both the IFIs
and developing countries.
- Governance should be regularly monitored to help track
progress, generate greater accountability, and build demand
for further progress.
- The international community must support efforts to strengthen
governance systems through ratification and support for global
checks and balances eg. international law enforcement, anti-corruption
treaties, international transparency initiatives.
3. Punam Chuham provided further detail on the progress made
by developed countries in 2005 on aid and debt relief, and
on the risks to the implementation of these commitments, and
on the lack of progress on trade.
- On aid, developed country donors agreed to increase substantially
aid to developing countries, and in particular to sub Saharan
Africa, by 2010. They also agreed to make improvements in
aid quality, under the Paris Declaration.
But, risks and question marks remain, around whether donors
will meet their commitments both in terms of aid quantity
and quality.
- On debt too, good progress was made with the Multilateral
Debt Relief Initiative, but questions remain around whether
recipients will reap the benefits of debt relief, and be able
to maintain sustainable debt levels in the future.
- On trade, more needs to be done if the WTO's "Development
Round" is to be concluded successfully.
- In each of these spheres - aid, debt relief and trade -
mutual accountability necessitates careful monitoring of progress
towards commitments.
4. Brian Levy introduced the GMR's concept of "national
governance systems" which are made up of a series of
actors, their relationships, and the outcomes which the system
produces. This conceptualisation emphasizes a range of issues:
- Governance is multi-dimensional.
- Corruption is one possible output of governance systems,
but there are other possible outputs; governance is not the
same as corruption.
- "There is no unique path to "good governance".
Rather, there are different trajectories.
- It is important to monitor various dimensions of governance.
Indicators are available.
- "Good things do not always go together". Countries
might do well in terms of producing sensible policies, whilst
failing to tackle corruption eg. Bangladesh.
- There is a need both for broad and aggregated indicators
and for specific and disaggregated ones.
5. Paolo de Renzio of ODI made four sets of points:
- On aid quality: To improve aid quality it is important
to understand the incentives and politics which lie behind
the way in which aid is delivered, and alter them, rather
than simply calling for more flexible and predictable aid.
- On mutual accountability: There is a paradox in that it
is developing countries rather than donors who are particularly
keen to see mutual accountability, but it is the donors who
have the power in the aid relationship, including the power
to deliver mutual accountability.
- On the role of donors: We don't know enough about what
might work.
- Next year's GMR should perhaps say more about donor accountability
/ answerability, about developing countries' perspectives,
and about the political economy of mutual accountability in
aid.
6. Julius Court welcomed the report, emphasizing the importance
of governance and monitoring governance, and made three additional
sets of points about monitoring governance:
- On the approach taken to governance by the GMR: it is good
that the World Bank/IMF is saying more about politics, but
the GMR's approach to governance might be rebalanced to pay
attention to legitimacy and democracy as well as to corruption
and transparency.
- On indicators: there has been good progress on developing
indicators for governance, but assessments need to be rigorous
and comprehensive.
- On aid and governance: they should be, and will be, linked
by donors, because this can encourage governance reforms,
and because taxpayers in donor countries will want to know
that their aid is being used effectively.
7. Questions and comments from the floor covered a wide range
of issues, including the following:
- Why doesn't population growth feature in the GMR? Is this
because the MDGs don't include targets on population growth?
(This is a reasonable question; population growth and trends
are clearly very important, particularly in relation to AIDS
and its effect on the productive population. It is an issue
that the report considers, but not in detail and something
that the Bank is intending to look into further.)
- Why doesn't the GMR say anything about the sustainability
or otherwise of oil-dependent growth? (This is a good point,
although it may not be the case that increasing oil prices
will have uniformly negative impacts on developing countries.
Nevertheless, attention does need to be paid to this issue.)
- Given the data gaps identified by the GMR, how robust is
the GMR's analysis? (There are data problems; the GMR does
what it can with the available data.)
- Enhancing aid quality requires tackling the incentives
and politics in donor countries which have led to - according
to the analysis of ActionAid - much aid being ineffective
"phantom aid". There is also a need for more political
pressure for change in recipient countries as there is a danger
that increased levels of aid will lead to further problems
of accountability.
- There is a need for transparency and accountability on
both sides of the aid relationship, for instance in relation
to extractive industries. (Yes, mutual accountability does
require mutual transparency and monitoring.)
- Does a focus on indicators distract attention from the
underlying politics? (No, a dual focus on both indicators
and politics can be helpful.)
- Are there specific guidelines for governance indicators
that countries must fulfill to show that they have made progress.
(No, there is not a core set of indicators, rather they are
developed on the basis of the situation in a specific country.)
8. In conclusion, Mark Sundberg reiterated that the world
is failing in terms of progress towards the MDGs, governance
needs to be brought more centrally into the debate.
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